* Gov. Rauner held a press availability today and was asked…
Why is it worth it to use state universities which are starving, and social service agencies which are already starved; why is it worth it to use them as leverage to get your agenda?
* His response…
Well, I disagree with the premise at least for our administration. We have no interest in using them or anything as leverage.
OK, stop right there. From the beginning of the impasse in 2015…
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner kicked off a campaign-style statewide tour Monday by indicating he’ll try to “leverage” the state’s money woes into securing a series of pro-business changes from a General Assembly controlled by Democrats likely to fiercely oppose them. […]
“Crisis creates opportunity. Crisis creates leverage to change … and we’ve got to use that leverage of the crisis to force structural change,” said Rauner, borrowing from a political philosophy famously coined by his friend Rahm Emanuel that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
And from the campaign…
“We will crush our economy if we try to spend money on both high-cost, inefficient, bureaucratic, heavily unionized government and a social safety net to help the disadvantaged,” Rauner said.
“We can’t afford both,” he said, and “wealth creators,” like JIMMY JOHN LIAUTAUD, founder of Jimmy John’s sandwich shops and another panelist, would be forced to leave the state.
“I think we can drive a wedge issue in the Democratic Party on that topic and bring the folks who say, ‘You know what, for our tax dollars, I’d rather help the disadvantaged, the handicapped, the elderly, the children in poverty,’ ” Rauner said, instead of directing tax dollars to the Service Employees International Union or “AF-Scammy,” an apparent reference to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, known as AFSCME for short.
* Anyway, back to today’s comments by the governor…
What I’m advocating is we need to change our system, it’s broken, and we need balanced budgets. And the reason that this is so hard, one of the reasons it’s so hard is that we’ve never had balanced budgets. We either don’t pay our pensions, we don’t pay our bills or we borrow on the bond market. This has been going on for 30 years. We can’t keep doing this. We’re not the federal government, we can’t print money. We’re not the federal government, we can’t just borrow unlimited. We actually have to live within our means.
This is all I’ve said. And I’ve said either let me cut so we can balance the budget, and even with the cuts universities will get funded and social services would get much support. So, and I am very, very supportive of our social services safety net. It’s important, I support it in the state of Illinois. Many of the agencies that have been hurt by this budget impasse are the same services that my wife and I have been supporters of for decades. I’m a big advocate for these human services.
It’s a tragedy that the General Assembly under Madigan’s majority won’t change anything, and they just want to do more deficit spending. And let’s be clear that the stopgap proposal to have more deficit spending - not fix the problem, not get a balanced budget - all that’ll do is kick the can down the road, make the tax hike bigger, later, push more employers and more jobs out of the state and not solve any problems, but just make it worse.
* The same reporter followed up…
How would you define the leverage that you’re using politically to try to get your agenda passed?
* The governor’s response…
My strict effort is to talk to the people of Illinois. That’s why I speak to with you about this most every day. That’s the reason I go on radio and TV to talk about it. That’s the reason I give six speeches pretty much seven days a week. That’s the reason I use social media to get the message out. That’s the reason that sometimes we do use paid media to get the message out. The people of Illinois need to know what’s on the line. Term limits, fair maps, property tax freeze, pension reform, education funding reform. These are all important things to help us get balanced budgets for the long term. Long term.
We could do a massive tax hike, which is what Madigan’s Democrats have indicated they would like, to balance a budget for one year, maybe 18 months, maybe two years. But it would quickly be out of balance. Whatever our taxpayers pay in in their hard-earned money would quickly be spent in more. This has been our pattern for 30, 40 years. We need structural change to grow the economy and structural change to bring down the cost of government. That way we can keep our budgets balanced without having to raise taxes more in the future.
Discuss.
